West rips Obama on Pakistan doctor

Calling President Barack Obama an “amateur” on foreign policy, Rep. Allen West is blasting the administration for failing to secure the release of a Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA hunt down Osama bin Laden.

West (R-Fla.) said Tuesday about Dr. Shakil Afridi that the United States was wrong to “hang him out to dry,” arguing that after bin Laden was identified and killed, the doctor and his family should have been taken out of Pakistan to ensure their safety.

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“It kind of shows the amateur nature of this administration and President Obama in talking too much about this operation and enabling the Pakistanis to listen carefully to some of the words and verbiage he was using and they were able to back trace it and put the pieces together on their side,” West told Greta Van Susteren of Fox News.

Afridi ran a vaccination program for the CIA in Pakistan, which helped to identify bin Laden’s location in Abbottabad — the town where U.S. Special Forces killed the Al Qaeda leader in a top-secret mission last year. The doctor was convicted and sentenced to 33 years in prison for conspiring against the state, despite the U.S.’s request for his release.

West said Tuesday that the Pakistani government’s conviction of Afridi was proof that the country is “aligning” with Al Qaeda, and that it brings into serious question whether the U.S. can consider Pakistan an ally. The congressman pressed the Obama administration to continue demanding the doctor’s release, saying Afridi and his family are most likely in grave danger.

“I cannot understand why anyone says that this is a very successful president when it comes to foreign policy,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s naiveté or as I said, it’s just amateur hour in the White House, but these have serious national security ramifications.”

West’s remarks about Afridi came on the same day that the congressman suggested that more attention be given to Obama’s use of drugs in his youth.

West was asked at a town hall in Boca Raton to address his alleged assault of an Iraq police officer in 2003. West, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, shot back that he was never “convicted of anything.”

“If you guys want to go back and talk about what happened nine years ago for me, let’s talk about the president doing blow, and smoking dope,” the congressman said to laughter and applause, according to a video of the event posted by the liberal blog ThinkProgress.